It was the story I had been looking for all my life!
A good man, ambitious. But so busy helping
others, life seems to pass him by. Despondent. He
wishes
he had never been born. He gets his wish.
Through the eyes of a guardian angel he sees the
world as it would have been had he not been born.
Wow! What an idea. The kind of idea that when
I get old and sick and scared and ready to die --
they'll say, 'He made The Greatest Gift.'
-Frank Capra

I'm sure your family does it too, sit around watching It's a Wonderful
Life and speaking all of the lines moments ahead of the characters.
Younger folk may not recall that in the early 80's, before Republic Pictures
reclaimed the copyright to the movie, it was on literally dozens of times
from Thanksgiving to New Years every year. And we all watched it,
every single showing. Somehow the upbeat message about
the individual's capacity to change the world for the better achieved a
special resonance in those heady Reagan Era days of promise. Now
it's shown on a network just once a season as an attempt at Event programming,
but every red blooded American family owns a videotape and pops it in at
least a few times over the holidays.

Turns out, the movie was based on a story by respected Civil War historian,
Philip Van Doren Stern (one assumes he's from The Van Doren family of Quiz
Show fame). The story sprang full blown from Van Doren's
head while he was shaving on the morning of Feb. 12, 1938.
He rewrote it several times and then in 1943 sent it to his agent to see
if he could get a magazine to buy it. Unbelievably, they all turned
it down. So he had a couple hundred copies made and sent them to
friends in their Christmas cards. Someone showed the story to Frank
Capra when he was looking for a project after the War ended and, if the
quote above is to be believed, he instantly realized that he had an American
classic in his hands.

The story itself is much more spare than the movie. Characters
like Uncle Billy, Violet Bick, Ernie and Bert and even Mr. Potter are all
missing. But the essential tale, of George Pratt contemplating suicide
and a guardian angel intervening to show him the effect he has had on the
lives of others, remains. This is one of those rare instances where
a movie actually improves upon the written version, but the story is still
quite affecting and has obvious historical interest.